Vocational Understandings: An Exploration of the Nature of the Tensions in the Musician-Cleric Relationship

Vocational Understandings: An Exploration of the Nature of the Tensions in the Musician-Cleric Relationship

By Alexander C. Graham IV, 2020 -- "Go up to a group of clergy and say, “let’s talk about Church musicians…” and the eyerolls will be ubiquitous and revelatory. Go up to a group of Church musicians and do the reverse, and expect to encounter the same dramatic response. As a priest who was first a musician, I understood both worldviews personally, but needed to explore them on a larger scale.
Through individual interviews, I sought to explore the nature of the unique and unusual relationship between musicians and clerics. What made it work? Where were there problems? How does one group tend to view the other? I then brought the participants together for a plenary session to test what I thought I learned and to discern together in a group what makes for a good relationship, and where the tensions might lie.
One of the significant learnings (for both myself and for those musicians and clerics participating) during this project was that the stories of epically tragic cleric-musician relationships, while perhaps entertaining, are far more widespread than encountered in real life, and do not match the overall experience of the participants or their colleagues. Problems – even daunting ones – do arise, and can be addressed, but they do not escalate to the level of popular expectation."

Graham, Alexander Coulter IV

Virginia Theological Seminary

April 17, 2020

Coyright 2020, the author.

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Project thesis.